Editorial: Obama Gives Free Rein To Union Thugs

Workers' Freedom: A departing Obama administration bureaucrat just made the forcible unionization of American workers a lot easier. When it comes to bullying, this president has a double standard.

To do something about kids in school getting shoved around, the White House sends the first lady onto the Ellen Show to bemoan the supposed "culture of bullying" in America.

But when it comes to those kids' hard-working fathers and mothers struggling for a paycheck amid 9.1% unemployment, President Obama is only too happy to see them bullied at the hands of labor thugs.

Wilma Liebman, who has worked as a lawyer for big labor- and union-coddling government agencies unceasingly since 1974, left behind quite a present for her benefactors Sunday as she ended her chairmanship of the National Labor Relations Board. Included in a series of pro-union decisions was the bureaucratic enactment of "Card Check" over the heads of Congress.

Card Check means that if union forces can get most employees within a workplace to sign a card requesting a unionization election, the opposite happens: A secret ballot of workers is actually prohibited, and the union automatically comes into being — even if most workers oppose being unionized.

The need for privacy in workers expressing their wishes on the exercise of their right to organize must itself be protected as a fundamental right. It is, without question, the only way to stop union intimidation and thuggery of millions of Americans.

As the National Restaurant Association — whose members provide livelihoods to millions — has aptly stated: "An employee's decision to join a union should be made in private, protected from any coercion by unions, employers or co-workers."

In essence, the NLRB ruling undemocratically passes liberal Democrats' deceitfully named "Employee Free Choice Act" into law. As Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., chairman of the House Education and Workforce Committee, has said in opposition to that bill:

"It is beyond me how one can possibly claim that a system whereby everyone — your employer, your union organizer and your co-workers — knows exactly how you vote on the issue of unionization gives an employee 'free choice.'"

No one would agree to ending voter privacy in elections for president, senators, congressmen, governors and mayors. In union organizing, the likelihood of threats and actual violence are far greater.

Kline now accuses the NLRB of "unloading a barrage of bureaucratic activism that will devastate employees and job creators."

"With more than 14 million Americans unemployed," he suggests, "it is past time the president denounce the job-destroying actions of the NLRB and begin working with Congress on responsible policies that will put our nation's workers and job-creators first."

But the president, who placed Liebman as NLRB chief within hours of his inauguration on Jan. 20, 2009, has a different take. In 2007, then-Sen. Barack Obama said Card Check would let workers "bargain for their fair share of the wealth our country creates."

Big labor's thugs have shoved Card Check down America's throat against the will of Congress. Just call it using the "bully puppet."

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